A Closer Look: Episode 36 - Siena’s Piazza Del Campo
Twice every summer, Siena hosts one of Italy’s best known regional festivals: the Palio, a mad horse race around the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo. With bright costumes and liveried horses in a medieval style, flag-tossing and a courtly pennant as prize for the winning horse that represents each neighbourhood, it’s hard to think of a more colourful celebration of local life.
The Campo, once an open space as its name, “field”, suggests, is the perfect stage of this pageantry. And yet, a closer look at its history and design reveals the way in which it came to represent a place to do government in common, in a time of great conflict between factions, families and neighbourhoods.
In this episode of A Closer Look, Dr Nick Gordon sits down with historian of medieval and Renaissance Italy, Dr Nick Eckstein, to find out more.
There are many views of Sienna's Piazza del Campo here.
Dr Nick Eckstein
Nick Eckstein is a historian with an international reputation for his innovative research into the society and culture of Renaissance Florence.
Dr Nick Gordon
Nick is a historian of Italy and of Western Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. He has led tours to Italy, France, Germany, Scandinavia, East Asia and Australasia for more than fifteen years. Nick is a director of Limelight Arts Travel.